Be My Bride and Have My Baby Read online

  And if it happened to look good then who was she to worry about that?

  Slightly energized, she walked to the section of the dresses which had a bunch of knee-length black options all hung up in a row. She flipped through the various skirts, feeling chiffon and gauze and linen and cotton, and finally found one which cinched at the waist just enough to give her a defined hourglass figure without looking either too adult or too girlish. She decided, at the last minute, to throw in a blush linen blazer and a pair of high heels which serendipitously fit her, which she found surprising; she didn’t often have good luck finding shoes which fit her in resale shops.

  On her way out of the shop – in fact, after she'd already paid – she picked up a cognac tote bag and decided to double back and purchase it as well. She didn’t love the idea of wearing those high heels the entire night, and if she brought a chic and large bag along, she could easily pack a pair of tennis shoes or flats to change into. This, she thought, would also be an effective way to beat the whole idea of being prepared for anything. She could pack a lot of preparation into that large bag.

  She walked home, wondering where on earth Rodger Wyatt could be taking them on their first date. His profile had made it seem as if he were reasonably—or unreasonably—adventurous, but surely he wouldn’t take a woman he’d never met on such an already nerve-wracking occasion as a first date on some strange sort of expedition? Surely not. In addition, she thought that if there were something more on the interesting side of things on the docket, Rodger would have done her the courtesy of telling her to be more prepared, at least on some general level. Surely he’d have told her to wear jeans, or hiking boots, or something like that, if they were going to be doing anything more than walking over very simple and flat terrain.

  She hoped. She was putting a lot of hope and faith into a person whom she'd never met.

  The next thing she did, once she'd gotten home, was to wolf down a ham and cheese sandwich. She wasn’t quite sure whether worrying burned calories, but she was certainly nervous enough and hungry enough that a little bit of comfort food was able to take her a very long way. She sat on the couch again and watched another sitcom and felt a little bit more like she was sort of in control of what was happening.

  That done, she went into her small bedroom and laid her black dress on the bed. She hadn’t thought about what the darkness of the dress would do against the darkness of her skin—would she just look like a blot next to the more boldly dressed women Rodger was surely used to going out with? She hushed herself. She didn’t know anything about his dating history. Anyway, he was on an app looking for love, the same as she was. What did she have to apologize for?

  She looked at the clock and decided to put on the dress long before it was time to do so, but she was running out of ways to stall. She slipped on the silk slip and then the chiffon overlay and twirled in it for a moment, glad that she'd gone with this younger, flirtier option. It felt fun. It felt vibrant. She knew she looked good in it.

  Suddenly she was much more excited for tonight and all it could bring. Who knew what the evening would hold?

  Chapter 3

  Rodger Wyatt was having a slightly less bad day than the one he'd had the day before. It still wasn’t a particularly good sort of day, he thought ruefully.

  The other day he and his friend Mike had been playing one-on-one and Rodger had boastfully boasted that he might have a date that evening. When said date hadn't so much transpired, Mike had been a little too happy about it, Rodger thought. The corners of his mouth turned down, and he sighed.

  Not that he blamed Melissa for it. It would be ridiculously unfair of him to begin a relationship—maybe, he thought; perhaps he was getting ahead of himself, but still—ridiculously, horribly unfair to start things with that sort of resentment on the books. He’d be cutting their relationship down before it had a chance to start. He sighed. Mike had been needling him all evening, though, and he didn’t like that. Not at all.

  So today was better than yesterday, but there was still the black cloud of last night’s embarrassment hanging over his head.

  Tonight, Rodger thought as he schlepped down to the kitchen after he woke up, he had a date. That was a fact. He'd looked in his calendar and reviewed his texts several times over the course of the night, waking up, refusing to believe it. It had been a long time since he’d been on a date—and even longer since he’d been on a good one.

  Rodger was the type of man who was definitely still working on sharpening his social skills. Mike was one of the few people in the world whom Rodger felt he could trust and speak with easily; everyone else felt like such an effort. And—with his specific circumstances—well—he'd found that many of the women who had professed to like him in the past were actually only hanging around for one specific reason: his money.

  Rodger had been lucky enough to inherit a large fortune from his father, who had been one of the pharmaceutical moguls of the USA and Canada several decades before. In addition to this he'd inherited three mansions.

  Well, thought Rodger petulantly as he scraped some butter across almost-burnt toast, they weren’t all mansions. They couldn’t technically be defined as them. They were just very large houses, with sprawling acreage attached. He wasn’t sure what the definition of a mansion was, now that he thought about it. Certainly none of the women to whom he'd tried to downplay his family’s massive wealth—which was counted in the billions—believed him when he tried to say that they weren’t mansions.

  And that was why he'd signed up for the dating service. He wanted to preserve some level of possible anonymity, some level of hoping that the woman he ended up with hadn’t selected him and fawned over him to court his dollars instead of him personally.

  Of course he knew that any sane woman with an internet connection would likely Google him prior to their date. Perhaps he wasn’t looking for quite a sane woman. He thought that for a moment and savored the insane romance of the thought before coming back to practicality. Of course he wanted to be with someone who had their wits about them. Perhaps just not someone who trod the more mercurial line. He wanted to be with someone who liked him for him; was that too much to ask for?

  Rodger shook his head and then poured himself a second bowl of cereal. He needed something to keep his mind off the day…something to shake him out of being overly introspective. He picked up his phone and called Mike. Perhaps he’d see if they could go do something out of doors prior to the fast-approaching hour when he’d go pick up this Melissa…

  ***

  Melissa was ready to go. She'd slipped into her black dress and made sure, to the best of her abilities, that the high heels which she'd selected to go with the dress fit snugly within the cognac tote she'd purchased. In the meantime, she was wearing a black and white pair of leather sneakers with no-show socks. She was going for—what was it called? A sort of high-low look.

  She had to admit, casual or elegant or some mixture of the two, she looked very good in the black and white combo. It brought out the luster of her dark skin. She applied a bit more blush to the apples of her cheeks and made sure that her mascara wasn’t flaking off anywhere awkward.

  That was the thing about a date, Melissa thought. Most of the time, you could get away with imperfect makeup and that sort of thing, because for most of the time, you wouldn’t be the primary focus for anyone. But on a date…particularly during a first date…particularly during a first date which had been instigated online, so that she and Rodger hadn’t seen each other in the flesh prior to—well—when Rodger would pick her up. Melissa glanced at the gold bangle watch she had slipped on her left wrist. She still had about ten minutes before he was slated to show up. She looked out the window at her empty street. She hoped that he’d be able to find the place. She assumed he had GPS, of course, but sometimes the online maps for her apartment directed people to a place about a block away…

  After one last glance in the mirror, arching her eyebrows at herself,
making sure that everything was smudged where it should be smudged and sleek where it should be sleek, Melissa walked downstairs to sit casually on her front stoop. She knew that if she stayed in her apartment for a moment more she would start to get antsy; and that didn’t suit her. Not today.

  It wasn’t long at all before a bright blue car pulled up before her. She looked at it and had to do a double take. It wasn’t a muted blue or a royal blue or even a sky blue; it was an almost iridescent teal. Just looking at it made her want to laugh. She didn’t, of course; that would have been rude. But she looked at it in abject wonderment, and when she saw that a tall man in slim jeans and a sport coat was climbing out of it, unfolding himself and scratching his hair in an adorably scruffy manner, she grinned. Was this her date? And was this the vehicle which was going to transport them to—well—wherever it was they were going?

  She allowed herself a congratulatory moment. It seemed that she'd gone the right route with a mixture of formal and informal wear, with her date’s jacket and jeans. She thought for a moment about running upstairs to ditch her heels so that she’d have more room in her tote, but thought that it was easier just to keep them. Plus, Melissa thought, you never know when you’ll want to appear about three inches taller…

  Melissa watched as the man squinted up at the building, and then saw him notice her. He obviously didn’t want to appear super obtrusive about it, but he had to identify her somehow. Melissa decided to throw caution to the wind. She stood up and skipped down the concrete steps and then gave him a little wave when she was standing about five feet away from him, and then immediately hated herself for it. Who awkwardly waves when they’re already standing in front of the person they’re greeting? Before she could berate herself too much, the man was speaking.

  “Are you Melissa? If so, I’m Rodger.”

  Melissa was pleasantly surprised by his voice. The thin frame of him might have gone well with a slightly higher voice, but his was rather more of a basso profundo. It almost didn’t seem to quite go with him, but in a good way rather than a jarring one.

  Melissa thought about what Rodger had just said and then laughed. Rodger raised one eyebrow. “Is that funny?”

  “Sort of,” Melissa said honestly. “What would your name be if I wasn’t Melissa?”

  Both of Rodger’s eyebrows had now shot up to his hairline. Melissa wondered if he wasn’t used to going out with the sort of girl who could point out a logical fallacy like that. She tossed her hair and smiled.

  Rodger, by now, had decided to grin. “Still Rodger, actually. Unconditionally.”

  “Well, then, I’m unconditionally Melissa.”

  “Nice to meet you, Melissa,” said Rodger formally. He gave a half-duck with his head that looked like it might have been a bow. Melissa stared and laughed and wondered if she should have put out her hand to be daintily kissed.

  “Are you always this formal?” asked Melissa. Something about Rodger’s obvious discomfort put Melissa at ease. It wasn’t his awkwardness that did it; it would have been only too easy for her to feed off his embarrassment and make stilted, awful conversation until the date torpedoed in its own right. It was more a sense that she felt that at least one of them should be somewhat comfortable, and one glance was more than enough to tell her that it would not be Rodger who acted in this capacity.

  “Almost never,” said Rodger. “I’m a little nervous.”

  This, again, was completely disarming. Melissa wouldn't have expected that a date of hers would be this truthful.

  “Well, I couldn’t tell,” said Melissa, intuiting that a tiny white lie would be more comforting than its opposite. “You look great, by the way.”

  “And you do as well look beautiful,” Rodger said automatically. He sounded a little bit like a very sweaty computer.

  “As sincere as that sounded,” Melissa said, laughing. The poor man, she thought.

  “No—I—“

  “Come on, you can compliment me all night long if you like,” said Melissa. “Let’s get going, shall we?” She thought that if she gave him something else to do other than stare at her and sputter he might find himself a little less out of his element. She imagined that he must not date very much.

  “Yes! That. Sure,” said Rodger, and he walked briskly around the car to open up the door for her.

  When he slid in the driver’s seat and started up the car, Melissa looked at him quizzically. “So,” she said. “Teal.”

  “Yep,” said Rodger; and for the first time his face split into a boyish grin. “I won this—it was first prize in a contest I entered last year.”

  “A contest?”

  “Rock climbing,” Rodger said briskly. “I climbed the highest and quickest, and so I won a car.”

  “Fascinating,” said Melissa. She meant it. Where from many men this would have certainly been some sort of boast, from him it felt like a bald fact. She didn't get the impression that he was trying to sell himself; in fact, his mind seemed to be more on the road. He seemed to have decompressed a little bit by snapping into action. “I’ve never rock climbed, actually. Were you wearing some sort of—I don’t know—harness? Was everything safe?”

  “Oh, immensely safe,” Rodger said, looking over at her with a warm smile.

  “I could never,” Melissa said decidedly. “Even if there was zero chance in the world that I would fall, you know—I just couldn’t do it. Something psychological, I think.”

  “Are you afraid of heights?”

  “Immensely so,” laughed Melissa. “I know it’s completely crazy, and I mean that; but there’s something about being way up in the sky that just breaks me. I have that thing, you know, where when you’re high up you want to know what it’d be like to fall—“

  “Oh, just like that thing where when you’re riding in a car and you’re holding a book, you have the sudden urge to just—drop it outside?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Melissa.

  “You don’t, of course,” said Rodger.

  “Of course not,” said Melissa.

  “But the urge is there just the same, and you find yourself afterward staring at the window or the cliff’s edge or whatever, just—paralyzed and enthralled with the fear of what might have been,” said Rodger.

  “A bit, yeah,” said Melissa. “But you’re able to go cliff climbing and stuff despite that? I’d get so nervous that I would do something stupid; either on purpose or accidentally. I’m nervous just thinking about it.”

  “Well, I suppose that the thrill is half the reason to do it,” said Rodger.

  “What are you, some sort of adrenaline junkie?” Perhaps subconsciously, Melissa tugged at her seatbelt.

  Rodger smiled and very simply and slowly turned on to a side street in front of a small restaurant which had no name on the front of it. Melissa could tell it was a restaurant by the outdoor seating and the fantastically spicy, meaty smell.

  “Yes and no,” Rodger said measuredly. “I wouldn’t ever behave in an adrenaline-y way when I have a passenger in my car, though. And everything—well—most of what I do is extremely safe. Just very, very fast or difficult or … otherwise extreme.”

  “Right,” said Melissa. “I appreciate the heads up, I guess.”

  Rodger paused. He looked over at Melissa across the center console of the teal car, and grinned. “I suppose that was a rather intense first ten minutes of our first date, wasn’t it?”

  Melissa tucked her hair behind her ear and uncrossed her ankles. “It wasn’t not intense,” she said primly.

  “Right, then,” said Rodger; and he walked around to the other side of the car to open her door for her. “We’re here,” he said unnecessarily.

  “Where?” asked Melissa. She gestured at the blank-faced building.

  “At our dinner place,” said Rodger. “Oh yeah,” he said, noticing the absence of any form of signage. “I think that fell down a while ago. But don’t let that make you think this place is decrepi
t or anything, it’s awesome, you’ll love it….”

  “Right,” said Melissa. “Shall we?”

  They ducked into the tiny establishment, which seemed as if it could have easily been someone’s proper home. There were armchairs in the corners of the rooms and portraits on the walls. Everywhere Melissa looked, though, it seemed that there were dining tables. Of course, this would not be all that out of the way for a restaurant; but there was only one table per homey, styled room.

  Rodger led them into a dining room; a small, purplish affair with one wall that was lined entirely with stacks of books. The other wall was a very large window which looked out over a small bay, which Melissa hadn't realized existed.

  Rodger walked over and opened one panel of the window and a breeze that smelled of lakes and fresh air wafted in. There had been such familiarity in the action that Melissa cocked her head. “You’ve been here before, I take it?”

  “Yeah,” said Rodger. “I own it.”

  “You own the restaurant?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’s ‘Melissa’,” said Melissa, smiling. “Well, this is a wonderful room. Is the concept—?”

  “A simple one,” finished Rodger. “Each room’s its own little dining room; it’s supposed to feel extremely cozy.”

  “Well, I love it.”

  “Thanks,” said Rodger. “We’ve been pretty successful. Where would you like to sit?”

  Melissa looked down. There were two chairs at the table and there was only one table. “Here, I suppose,” she said, sitting down in the chair closest to her.

  “I’ll go here, then,” said Rodger. He sat down opposite her and immediately looked out to the view beside them. There were lily pads floating on the glass-mirror surface of the lake; the lake itself was fringed with tall grass reaching up to a darkening blue sky.